Dedicated to the acceptance, medical treatment, & legal protection of individuals in the process of correcting the misalignment of their anatomical sex, & supporting their transition into society.
Lisa Jain Thompson says political correctness normally prevents modern society from an honest examination of the transgender movement: The transgendered may be critical of society, but society cannot be critical of the transgendered. I am under no such constraints. Where men and women born with the medical condition Harry Benjamin Syndrome (HBS fna transsexuality) are focused on bringing their outward sexual organs into agreement with their actual sex, the transgendered community's key concern seems to be gaining access to random public bathroom facilities and complaining that life is unfair.
This column by Lisa Jain Thompson is one part of a four-part series. What follows is an examination of the very vocal demands of the transgender political movement and community.
Part 1.The Differences Between Us. An investigation into the basic differences between HBS men and women and the transgendered. It would seem that where HBS men and women are focused on bringing their outward sexual organs into agreement with their actual sex, the transgendered community's key concern is to be able to choose public bathroom facilities at random. An HBS man or woman is driven to correct their misassigned genitals, the transgendered seem driven only to change the noun on their bathroom door. More
Part 2.The Transgender Need For Legal Deceit. An investigation into the transgender initiative to obtain two drivers licenses, each with a different names and sex marker. Harry Benjamin Syndrome (HBS) is medical condition that originates during fetal development inside the womb. HBS is not, intrinsically, trans-sex, trans-gender, or even trans-active. HBS, in and of itself, is not queer. HBS men and women fall along the normal bell curve for the human race for sexual preference. Some, if not the majority, of HBS men and women are straight, some are gay or lesbian, some are bisexual. More
Part 3.Why HBS Men And Women Threaten Transgenders. An investigation into the transgender Passing and the need for absolute approval and confirmation that drive their charges of HBS separatism. We have stated repeatedly that someone who cannot have surgery due to valid MEDICAL issues (other than fear of surgery) is HBS, albeit pre-op. We have been consistent in that position since day one. Financial considerations may also slow an HBS's progress towards surgery, giving them a long period of being pre-op but they keep working towards SRS and are still HBS. Not treating HBS is not an option. More
Part 4.A Look Inside the Transgender Mind. A non-politically correct investigation into the root causes of transgenderism. Political correctness normally prevents liberal modern society from subjecting certain subjects to scientific scrutiny, e.g., race, religion, intelligence, and, most recently, transgenderism. I have never been bound by political correctness (you can ask the third grade nun who taught me) or reluctant to poke into subjects that might give rise to great moral indignation by the offended cultural guardians. This is my fourth column that discusses the transgender and it takes a deeper look at the root causes of transgenderism. As Anton Chekhov wrote, Man will become better when you show him what he is like. More
Springfield, VA, USA. We have stated repeatedly that someone who cannot have surgery due to valid MEDICAL issues (other than fear of surgery) is HBS, albeit pre-op. We have been consistent in that position since day one.
Financial considerations may also slow an HBS's progress towards surgery. This gives them a long period of being pre-op but they keep working towards SRS and are still HBS. Not treating HBS is not an option.
However, anyone who declares that they don't require or desire surgery is NOT HBS. Someone who has the "desire" to be a woman but the not the physical need to be female is not, by any definition, HBS. Nor are they HBS if they believe that just adopting the social role and dress expected of the other sex is sufficient to make them a man or a woman (even if it meets their personal needs). Both of these examples would be transgender, not HBS.
Women come in all shapes and sizes some with bulging muscles and hairy six foot bodies; men too come in all shapes and sizes some with narrow shoulders, wide-hips, and short, hairless bodies. Doesn't change the fact that the women are women and the men are men and how well they may pass for who they are is only a matter of concern to ill-educated boys and men who think they are the sole and final arbitrators of maleness and femaleness.
In the real world, the world outside of gender theory, women and men do not pass there is no performance, there is simply being. Women exist, men exist: transgenders and cross-dressers pass.
If someone is dressed in women's clothes, spending all their time worrying about passing [cf. Note], they are not a woman they are man in a dress. Likewise, if someone is dressed in men's clothes and spends all their time worrying about passing, they are not a man they are a homicide statistic waiting to be made into a movie.
I repeat: Men are. Women are. Cross-dressers and transgenders pass.
When I send something similar to the above to any list dominated by transgenders, the responses are predictable. Transgenders react like they are like some full time stay at home queer mom criticizing HBS men and women for living and working in the straight world outside.
It's not that we [transgenders] don't have the desire to be women, we just don't have the compulsion to have an operation and physically change our genitals [lose their penises].
"HBS" are an exclusive self-celebrating group of transsexuals who did it (transited from one sex to another, changed genitals) with an eager gleam in their eye, damn the torpedoes, as against transsexuals who did it by choice or preference or "desire" (see above) but not absolute necessity [or did not do it at all].
Our division of opinion isn't over "desire" but "compulsion." Many more desire than feel compelled, and some of these become post-op and some don't.
The HBS are claiming to be purer than thou in some way, and not a mere affinity group of people with similar incautious temperaments. Why form your own club? Why does it matter?
If fanatical conviction [having SRS] is the sole discriminator, you're promulgating an insult. SRS may be desirable but it is not essential.
Are you saying HBS never appears in moderation, so a desire to live a "normal" life somehow remains alternative possibility? Either you are a woman or a man, and that's that, no maybes or boths, or less of each, or something else in between?
I have distilled the basic components of the transgender or "non-op transsexual" argument:
HBS men and women are fanatics with an unstable compulsion for surgery.
Transgenders are stable, logical women who, although they may desire surgery to some degree, do not find surgery necessary to live as women.
Transgenders, because they are not fanatical about it like the HBS, do not have an HBS woman's compulsion to mutilate their genitals into an approximation of the other sex. Penises are good for a woman to have hanging from her groin.
Transgenders are as much transsexuals as HBS men and women they're just transsexuals who don't necessarily need to correct their genitals to agree with their sexual identity.
And the key there is no sexual binary, no male or female. Sex is a spectrum on which one is at liberty to glide back and forth as one see fits and, on some very special days, one may chose to be both lingam and yoni.
What unscientific liberal cultural nonsense.
We live in a world where social science academics think themselves better suited to describe physical reality than scientists and doctors a world in which linguistics and radical feminist theory run rough trodden over scientific research and the structure of the human body.
The male transgenders, those part time women, cling to HBS women like little boys who, fearful of having to face the world alone, hold fast to their mothers' legs.
Springfield, VA, USA. Society (the women and men around us) has always been more comfortable if its members fall within certain known, established patterns: this is how we dress, this is what we say, this is w...
Springfield, VA, USA. On the last day of the court's term in the year twenty-oh-eight, the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Second Amendment [to the Constitution of the United States] protects ...
Springfield, VA, USA. Early in fetal development, before even a glimmer of genitalia, the central nervous system acquires its basic structure.
It is here, deep within the most complex structure ...
Their deepest fear is that, if they are not allowed to call themselves "transsexual", they have no explanation for their behavior other than those explanations they find distasteful.
It's almost as if all the transgenders in the world are angry at HBS men and women for separating and defining themselves with sex realignment surgery and want to teach all the HBS a lesson:
If I can't be a woman, neither can you.
Children.
Male children.
Boys.
Boys who are upset that the girls apply themselves to getting better grades while all the boys are too busy playing games outside in the yard.
by any means necessary
HBS men and women are different from the transgenders. To insist there is one overarching grand unifying theory is disservice to all, whether that disservice stems from the fallacy of identity politics, the neo-Marxist theories of the scientifically illiterate left, or the religion driven hypocrisy of the Christian political right.
Practicing really hard at being a transgender does not make you HBS. You can't learn to be HBS like you learn to play a guitar or a piano. No matter how much apples want to be oranges, the world doesn't work that way.
HBS are born, not made.
If you are unwilling to risk everything, if you have a laundry list of alibis why you have not planned to scheduled surgery, you are not and never will be HBS.
HBS is a part of the intersex family. We have the same surgeries to which only we have the agency to give informed consent. HBS become.
There is no we, only us the HBS, the men and women born transsexual.
Transgender is a thing apart, with something very different from what we have, full of passing and gender theory with very little to do with the lives we lead as women and men.
Note. Passing refers to a person's ability to be accepted or regarded as a member of the sex or gender with which they physically present. Typically, passing involves a mixture of physical gender cues (e.g. hair style or clothing) as well as certain behavioral attributes that tend to be culturally associated with a particular gender. Irrespective of a person's presentation, many experienced crossdressers assert that confidence is far more important for passing than the physical aspects of appearance.
Ms. Lisa Jain Thompson is the Co-Founder & President of TS-Si, Inc. She also serves as a Contributing Editor and columnist for the TS-Si website. Ms. Thompson's signed articles contain her own opinions and do not necessarily convey an official position of TS-Si, its partners, or affiliates.
Lisa welcomes your comments. You can use the public form below or send private correspondence via her TS-Si Contact Page. We will not divulge any personal details or place you on a mailing list without your permission.
I did not get the surgery to have sex. Nor did I get it for legal recognition. When I got SRS neither of those were a guaranteed matter. I signed a surgical consent form which acknowledged I might never climax again. I was in a good relationship. The legal issues were still being worked out.
Richard Smith, Editor-in-Chief, introduces Cases Journal. Dr. Smith urges all physicians to submit their case reports to the new open access Cases Journal, which publishes case reports from any area of healthcare.
Cases Journal will publish any case report that is understandable, ethical, authentic, and includes all essential information. A more selective companion, the Journal of Medical Case Reports, publishes original and interesting case reports that contribute significantly to medical knowledge. Article submissions are subject to potential publication by either journal. All reports will be entered in a common and open access database.
Ms. Lisa Jain Thompson
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